Resources

Past Presentation

Supporting Mothers, Babies, and Families: A CHW/CHR Approach | February 24, 2026

Date of Presentation: February 24, 2026

Type: Past Presentation  

Audience: Clinical  

Program: Pregnancy Care and Access  

Keywords: #babies  #chr  #chw  #families  #mothers  

In this presentation, Vicki, Louisa and Sam explore the vital role of Community Health Representatives (CHRs) and Community Health Workers (CHWs) in improving maternal and infant health outcomes. Attendees will learn how these trusted frontline workers bridge the gap between clinical systems and community needs by providing culturally tailored support, including home visits, prenatal/postnatal education, resource navigation, and advocacy. 

Presented by:

Vicki Palmreuter, BA
Owner/Consultant, Palmreuter Consulting LLC

Vicki Palmreuter is a tribal liaison and program manager with the Community Health Worker Collaborative of South Dakota (CHWSD), supporting tribal programs, health care organizations, and community-based organizations initiating or expanding CHW/CHR programs, and entities seeking reimbursement for these services. Vicki’s support of tribal health programs includes working with national Indian Health Service, evaluating state Medicaid CHW/CHR reimbursement accessibility to tribal programs. Vicki graduated from Concordia College in Moorhead, MN, with a Bachelor of Arts in biology.

Samantha Sabo, DrPH, MPH
Professor | Northern Arizona University

Samantha Sabo, DrPH, MPH is a professor in Health Sciences and a researcher with the Center for Health Equity Research at Northern Arizona University. For more than a decade, she has focused on the role and impact of Community Health Worker (CHW) workforce interventions and advocacy to improve the social determinants of chronic disease and maternal and child health. She has completed several CHW workforce studies to support building and sustaining the CHW workforce in Arizona and nationally. Dr. Sabo is a member of the Arizona Department of Health Community Health Worker Leadership Council, a member of the Arizona Community Health Worker Association board of directors and is a founding member of the Arizona Community Health Representative Coalition. Nationally, she serves in leadership positions with several CHW workforce and policy efforts, including the American Public health Association – CHW Section and the CHW Common Indicators Initiative. Dr. Sabo enjoys teaching and mentoring students within the newly established Master of Public Health Program at NAU and is a primary faculty member within the Health Promotion Concentration and Indigenous Health Track, as well as the Interdisciplinary PhD program at NAU. In both her research and public health practice, Dr. Sabo is a multi-disciplinary, community-engaged scholar and uses community-based participatory research, mixed, quantitative and qualitative methods and service-learning to identify community informed approaches to advance health equity. Through her trusted community and institutional collaborations,  Dr. Sabo has served as MPI and Co-Investigator to several National Institute of Health, state and foundation funded research and practice initiatives, and currently co-leads the Community Engagement Core for the Southwest Health Equity Research Collaborative funded through the NIH Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) program.

Louisa O’Meara, MPH
Senior Research Coordinator | Northern Arizona University

Louisa O’Meara MPH, is a Senior Research Coordinator at the Center for Health Equity Research at Northern Arizona University. Louisa holds expertise in the areas of Community Health Workers and Community Health Representative (CHR) workforce sustainability and interventions, Indigenous community health, social determinants of health, and community-based participatory research and evaluation. In partnership with CHR programs and American Indian health policy entities, Louisa conducted seminal CHR workforce studies. She currently co-leads grant evaluation for the CDC funded CHR Workforce Integration in Tribal Health Systems to Address COVID-19 (CHRs WITH uS!) project aimed at addressing the social determinants of COVID-19 and community resilience through CHR integration into public health and health care teams. Louisa loves to cook and read, and in her spare time she enjoys playing with her two young boys.

Resources Provided:

Date added: February 9, 2026